Arrested!Milosevic’s Seizure Unveils Hidden Agendas

Former
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic arrived in a Belgrade
jail Sunday, accused by Serbian authorities of corruption,
embezzling state funds, and abuse of power. He surrendered
peacefully to the militia besieging his home for nearly two
days this past weekend, despite having reportedly threatened
to kill himself, and the presence of about twenty armed
supporters willing to defend him from government assault.

STRUGGLE
AND SIEGE

Milosevic’s
arrest was anything but ordinary. Friday afternoon, regular
police cleared away the demonstrators who had gathered at
the news that a convoy full of armed men had arrived at the
gate of the former president’s home. Indeed, several hundred
heavily armed, masked men in black or mismatched uniforms
did appear, many wearing balaclavas or pantyhose on their
heads as disguise. An agency
report revealed in passing that the force was commanded
by Mihajlo Ulemek "Legija," a former Special Forces
officer loyal since October 5, 2000 to Zoran
Djindjic. Back then, the Daily Telegraph spoke
of Ulemek’s alliance with Djindjic – not yet Prime Minister
– as a disturbing sign that Djindjic was creating a private
militia.

After
an unpleasant exchange between the militia and the Army unit
guarding the residence, the Army withdrew. An announcement
around 10 PM Friday that Milosevic had been arrested and taken
to the central prison in a convoy of cars distracted the populace.
With the Army and the demonstrators gone and most of Milosevic’s
security disbanded, Ulemek’s men were ready to make
their move. Shortly before three in the morning, they
stormed
the residence – and failed. Milosevic’s remaining guards
greeted them with bullets. A 24-hour-plus siege
followed, ending only when Milosevic decided to surrender
early Sunday morning, April 1.

FOES
REJOICE

Milosevic's
arrest was hailed by the US,
NATO
and Yugoslavia s neighbors
and separatist groups as a vindication
of their policies and practices, while the ICTY immediately
demanded Milosevic s extradition and embarked on adding
new charges to his war crimes indictment. There was hardly
cause for such celebration; President Kostunica flat-out refused
extradition, and Milosevic is to be tried on charges that
have nothing to do with his alleged war crimes.

Nevertheless, the triumphant
escalation of Western rhetoric bore numerous indications that
the policy goals of the US and its satellites aimed far beyond
the fate of Milosevic as an individual.

As
news of arrest streamed in, some commentators suggested Milosevic
should
indeed commit suicide and save the Serbs from further
pressure. Others claimed he was never really contemplating
suicide, and that Milosevic’s death would
only serve US interests by removing a significant obstacle.

The
matter of Milosevic's guilt or innocence on charges in Yugoslavia
and the ICTY is less important at this moment than the fact
that he is being used as a weapon, both by the usual suspects
– the US and NATO – as well as a faction of the current government,
eager to increase its power and influence. Aside from showing
a readiness to bow
to US demands, Milosevic’s arrest strengthened the position
of Prime Minister Djindjic and his supporters at the expense
of President Kostunica.

ALL
THE PRIME MINISTER’S MEN

Indications
that Zoran Djindjic and his supporters in the government were
behind the arrest are legion. First, Djindjic had just returned
from a trip to the US, eager to make
a deal with the Bush administration not to block financial
aid to Yugoslavia after March 31. That was the deadline in
the appropriations law passed by Congressional hardliners
last fall, which mandated a cutoff of US aid and efforts to
block all other aid to Yugoslavia unless Milosevic was arrested
and extradited to the ICTY.

The
evening Ulemek’s masked men tried to enter Milosevic’s courtyard,
Djindjic claimed he knew nothing about any arrest, and that
he was at home, watching "Gladiator" with his son.
Yet just three days earlier, he told
Reuters that Milosevic’s arrest was only a matter of time,
after seven former government officials had been arrested
on corruption charges. President Kostunica, however, waskept
in the dark, as he was giving a speech in Geneva at the
time and had to rush home after receiving the news.

Zarko
Korac, one of Djindjic’s most vocal allies in the government,
claimed he knew about the arrest beforehand. He also gave
statements
to the press afterwards, describing the events inside
Milosevic’s home as if he witnessed them and calling the former
president suicidal. Cedomir Jovanovic, who was inside the
residence and managed
to persuade Milosevic to give up, confirmed at a press-conference
Tuesday that Milosevic contemplated suicide. While acknowledging
that Milosevic surrendered because he did not want bloodshed,
Jovanovic also criticized the Army (loyal to Kostunica) for
stopping Ulemek’s people from initially assaulting the house.
Incidentally, he is a high-ranking member of Djindjic’s Democratic
party.

When
President Kostunica finally green-lighted
the arrest on Saturday, he reportedly made this decision only
after a long meeting with Djindjic and his associates. Friday
night’s botched assault and the ensuing firefight forced
his hand. After such an event, backing off would be a
major PR defeat for the government.

POWER
PLAYS

Djindjic’s
ability to sidestep Kostunica and extort his support is a
profoundly disturbing trend. If the Serbian Prime Minister
and his followers can effectively do whatever they want while
the Yugoslav President is confined to criticizing or supporting
their actions after
the fact, Kostunica is in real danger of becoming Gorbachev
to Djindjic’s Yeltsin.

On
Tuesday, Croatia’s government daily Vjesnik heralded
Kostunica’s political
death, claiming that Djindjic is in tune with US policy
goals in the Balkans and willing
to submit to them completely, while Kostunica’s patriotism
is passé and has become a liability. According to Vjesnik,
Djindjic would prosper as long as he fulfills Western demands
– which, incidentally, include the further weakening and dismemberment
of Serbia.

EMPIRE’S
AGENDA

Having
paid for Milosevic’s arrest with a relatively paltry
sum, the US is intent on assailing Serbia further. America’s
Balkans policy is about
much more than Milosevic. Over the past ten years, Western
politicians and media tended to pursue "Slobophobia"
– a notion that Milosevic was a single culprit, and the Serbian
people were merely deluded by his powers of manipulation.
But another idea has been present all along – Serbophobia
– the notion that the Serbs as
a whole were guilty of events in the Balkans over the
past decade, and that Milosevic merely personified the entire
nation. Serbophobia was used to complement Slobophobia when
the latter, alone, was not enough. But it was always used
sparingly in order to avoid the deserving accusations of racism.

After
Milosevic's arrest, that distinction disappeared. With him
in prison  even only for corruption  Imperial
propagandists began attacking the Serbs as a people. Demands
on the Yugoslav authorities are likely to continue
 extradite Milosevic to The Hague, arrest and extradite
all
other indicted Serbs, and so on. When US Ambassador Montgomery
delivered the list of Washington's demands to Belgrade in
early March, it openly stated that Washington considered Djindjic's
government much more likely to comply with the ever-multiplying
conditions for aid and support.

ICTY
has already announced it would be indicting Milosevic soon
for alleged crimes in Croatia
and Bosnia, eager to saddle Milosevic with the responsibility
for those wars as well. In line with that, agencies have already
reported
excitedly that Milosevic admitted supporting the Bosnian
Serbs with money he was accused of embezzling, as if this
were a well-guarded secret.

Nebojsa
Malic left his home in Bosnia after the Dayton Accords and
currently resides in the United States. During the Bosnian
War he had exposure to diplomatic and media affairs in Sarajevo,
and had contributed to the Independent. As a historian who
specialized in international relations and the Balkans, Malic
has written numerous essays on the Kosovo War, Bosnia and
Serbian politics, which were published by the Serbian
Unity Congress. His exclusive column for Antiwar.com appears
every Thursday.

"JUSTICE"
IN THE HAGUE

Even
Djindjic is not claiming that Milosevic would be extradited
soon, though his statements can mean one thing in the morning
and something else altogether in the afternoon. Milosevic,
meanwhile, is facing new charges in Serbia; on top of corruption
and abuse of power, the authorities are considering the
charges of resisting
arrest and conspiracy to foment armed rebellion, the
latter basically constituting treason
and punishable by death. Serbia’s minister of police, once
part of a Milosevic government, said Tuesday in Vienna that
Milosevic might actually
wish to go to the Hague, because the ICTY does not have
a death penalty.

A
trial at home for corruption or treason, however, would
be entirely different in scope from a trial in The Hague.

The
ICTY is funded by the US and other NATO members. Its very
existence is based on the premise that Milosevic and the
Serbs were guilty of aggressive wars and unspeakable crimes.
Unlike other courts, whose existence is not predicated on
the outcome of any single trial, even a possibility of acquittal
for Milosevic would shatter the ICTY’s very foundations.
In fact, this need for securing convictions has prompted
the prosecutors to get very creative in presenting evidence.

A
case in the point is the trial of Serb General Radislav
Krstic. It recently featured a protected (i.e. anonymous)
prosecution witness, an American "linguistics expert"
who claimed
the speech patterns of Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia are so
distinctive, it would be "very difficult for Bosnian
Muslims to imitate the speech of Bosnian Serbs." Now
I know this is a bald-faced lie. I have been speaking
like any other Bosnian, Serb or Muslim, for over
24 years!

WHITHER
MILOSEVIC, OR WHITHER SERBIA?

In
the aftermath of his fall from power and recent arrest,
media that have fed the Western public all sorts of fabrications
regarding the Balkans for over a decade trolled out the
official line that Milosevic was an ideologue of "Greater
Serbia," responsible for four Balkan wars, genocide,
"ethnic cleansing," and in general, most of the
misery that now grips Serbia and the rest of former socialist
Yugoslavia. Most of these accusations are mendacious
drivel. But whether he is guilty of them or not does
not matter in the least.

In
order to justify
the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, policies
of the United States, NATO’s gross violations of international
law and the existence of ICTY, Milosevic has to be convicted
of war crimes by the ICTY. No other outcome would be recognized
by Washington. Most
Serbs, impoverished, disillusioned and itching to blame
it on someone they are capable of hurting  NATO and
the US being out of reach  are more than willing to
see him imprisoned or shot, no matter the consequences.
But by doing so, they would be admitting responsibility
for the alleged crimes Milosevic is accused of, and open
themselves up to new indictments, lawsuits and demands.

Milosevic
could potentially become much more harmful to his people
in court than he ever was at liberty. There is a precarious
distinction between prosecuting Milosevic at home for domestic
crimes and delivering him to the Inqusition to appease Serbia's
many enemies.

Prosecuting him for misrule would clearly benefit the Serbs;
allowing him to be persecuted by ICTY would open the door
to persecuting the Serbs as a whole.

It is a trap both Kostunica and Djindjic are
aware of, but while Kostunica is attempting a delicate balancing
act to avoid it, Djindjic  concerned only about his
power and prestige  is all to eager to jump right
in.

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